There is a story in a modern Kazakh novel by Iliyas Esenberlin
(1969) about Sultan Kenesari, who lived in the first half of the
nineteenth century (1802-1847) just before the completion of the
Kazakh annexation to Russia in the 1860s. He tried to establish a
Kazakh khanate independent of Russia. One day his followers
captured an esteemed Kazakh folk-poet, Aristan, from the Atighay
Kazakh clan (belonging to the Middle Horde). Aristan, however,
was greedy for money and he received a great for deal helping the
Russians to get a map of the Kazakh plains and to identify the
location and movement of Kazakh tribes. Aristan had amassed
considerable wealth by the time he was captured. When he was
taken to Kenesari, he kissed Kenesari's boots and begged him not
to kill him. Kenesari tried to hold back his anger and turned
pale. He said:

The man who sells his nation is like an infected horse. In
order to save other horses, there should not be any mercy for
that infected horse. There is only one sentence - death!
Although it sounds cruel, the sentence is just.

The followers of Kenesari remained silent. They did not react
to Kenesari's decision. Aristan begged Kenesari to allow him to
speak for the last time. When Kenesari agreed, Aristan sang a
song:

O brother Kenesari, if you like me, I am your dear
friend,Even if you hate me, I'm one of your Alash [Kazakh
nation].I'm the son of Atighay Qarauli,Who gave your father six wives.

Hearing these lines, Kenesari forgave this greedy poet. Then
Kenesari's followers immediately applauded him for his correct
decision about Aristan. The reason Kenesari forgave the poet was
not because Aristan reminded him that he was an old friend, or
because the poet was his kinsman. Aristan was a poet who knew
thousands of Kazakh folk tales, epics, and songs. Killing him was
equivalent to destroying a rich source of Kazakh culture and
identity. Therefore, Kenesari's followers did not react when he
sentenced the poet to die, but applauded his decision to free
him.

Though this story reminds us of the wisdom and justness of the
leaders of the Kazakh as free and independent adventurers, it
draws attention to the preservation of the cultural heritage of
Central Asia while emphasizing group consciousness.

The difficult situation in Central Asia

Scientists and young researchers are now in a difficult
position in Central Asia. If they speak a foreign language and
are asked to act as an interpreter, they can earn as much money
in one day as their monthly salary. If they can arrange a deal
with a foreign business, they may well be tempted to quit
academic work. What does this mean? It means that the accumulated
scientific legacy will rapidly disappear. Young graduates will
not seek a career in the academic world, and the future of
Central Asia will not be based on the sound development of
society. Once science and culture have disappeared, it will take
a very long time to regenerate them.

As for the Aral Sea problem, the main concern is whether the
partners in any international cooperative action in Central Asia
can afford to establish an effective institution there. The
political structure is not stable because the transitional
economy is deteriorating. A more powerful and reliable group
would be the researchers in each country's research institutes.
Science needs a common logic and common values. We should take
notice of the researchers' talent and ability, and, more
important, foster exchanges with researchers in foreign countries
who have the capability to deal with the environmental and other
problems that they face.

Coordinating Central Asia research

Research in Central Asia is carried out by three groups:
national academies of sciences, institutes of higher learning,
and industrial research institutes and centres. The national
academies of sciences of Central Asia are the most prestigious
centres of scientific research, to the extent that almost all
leaders of each country are full members of their academy. The
national academy, though fully retaining its independence,
cooperates with the government in formulating plans for
scientific research and development. The academy is a state
agency whose main functions are to organize scientific management
and to supervise theoretical research in the natural and social
sciences being conducted in all the country's research centres.
also determines the main directions of this research and
coordinates it countrywide.

Among the academy's activities are the training of research
personnel, the strengthening of ties between science and
education, and the introduction of the latest knowledge and
discoveries into the curricula and research programmes of higher
education institutions. The broad cornerstone of an academy's
activities is to blend the development of fundamental and applied
research and to strengthen relations between science and the
needs of the economy.

It seems clear that we need a carefully developed
comprehensive research project for the regeneration of the
environment of Central Asia, which should have an international
level of significance and be implemented in close cooperation
with colleagues from abroad. And it is the national academies of
sciences of each republic that possess sufficiently high and
versatile scientific potential to produce such a project. Their
academies have great experience in the study of natural
resources, the environment, and ecology - suffice it to say that
a score of academic institutes deals directly with the research
problems of the environment and nature.

The establishment of an international research centre

Researchers from Kyoto University in Japan and the Kazakh
National Academy of Sciences propose to establish an
International Centre for Central Asian Ecology in Central Asia.
Its first aim is to undertake research on such global
environmental problems as desertification, climate aridization,
and radioactive pollution. A second goal is to identify and adapt
new technologies and new institutions to Central Asian countries.
This International Centre will welcome talented scientists in
various fields from abroad as well as supporting (both morally
and financially) scientists from Central Asia. The International
Centre project proposes to integrate the resources of various
scientific specialties on an interdisciplinary basis in order to
offer solutions to the major environmental problems of the
contemporary world. To achieve this will require a concentration
of scientific expertise at an international level, and soundly
based cooperation between the academic and industrial sectors. I
hope that the international community will agree to this idea and
help Central Asia achieve sound development.

The Syrdarya, which runs through the northern base of the Tien
Shan mountains, travels 3,000 kilometres to the Aral Sea. The
Amudarya, which starts from the Kunlun mountains and runs
north-west through the Pamir Heights into the Aral Sea at its
south shore, has a river course of approximately 1,500
kilometres.

The Aral Sea, sitting close to and uphill from the Caspian
Sea, has had a very interesting history of change. In ancient
times, the Aral Sea presented a completely different landscape,
either having been a part of the greater Caspian Sea or not
having existed at all. During the Stone Age and the Bronze Age,
there once existed a lake between the Caspian Sea and the Aral
Sea. Today the Amudarya runs straight to the north, but it used
to run to the west. The area south of the Aral Sea had been
exposed for a long time to the shifting stream of the river,
leading to the expansion of rich soil suitable for agriculture.
People came and lived there, forming villages. Agriculture along
the Amudarya had become prosperous, and a civilization developed
in the Khorezm District. The Syrdarya runs into the Aral Sea on
its eastern shore. Agriculture also developed along its banks.
From the sixth century on, the irrigation system had expanded the
cultivated area and promoted activities based on economic
motivation, thus giving birth to some strong kingdoms. The Silk
Road became popular and prosperous, and the region had become the
base through which East-West trade was promoted and carried out.

Fig.
6.1 The change in the level of the Aral Sea: The shaded area
represents shrinkage between 1986 and 1993 (Note: not to scale)

Today this region has a great stretch of agricultural land
that straddles the banks of the Amudarya, presenting a view from
a satellite as if it were a huge elongated oasis in the middle of
a desert. As a result of the Ground Truth Survey carried out in
1994, we have found that the land is good for agriculture if
water is made available. For millennia, people have converted
desert landscapes into agricultural land through irrigation.
However, because of high evapotranspiration, these lands became
salinized. In order to flush out those salts from the soil,
drainage channels have had to be constructed, but these are quite
inadequate at present. Generally speaking, the rise and fall of
ancient kingdoms in this region depended to a great extent on
control of water sources and courses. Since the 1960s, enormous
efforts by the former Soviet regime to develop cotton fields
along the Amudarya and Syrdarya basins have produced large
quantities of cotton but also severe degradation of the land,
mainly salinization. Furthermore, the construction of many
irrigation canals has decreased the influx of water to the Aral
Sea.

The Aral Sea of today presents a miserable picture, having
lost almost half of its area of the 1960s. According to the
analysis of data obtained by satellite, the Aral Sea could
disappear some time in the twenty-first century.

I live in the centre of the Aral region's environmental
catastrophe. My people -the people of Karakalpakstan - have no
other Motherland than the Aral region; 1.3 million people now
live in the Karakalpak Republic. More than 10 million people now
live in the ecological disaster zone of the Aral Sea region, as
was pointed out in a summary document of a meeting of presidents
of Central Asian republics on 3 March 1995. The Aral today is not
just a local disaster.

Residents of the Aral region welcome the words of Uzbekistan's
President Islam Karimov and Kazakhstan's President Nursultan
Nazarbayev, who constantly draw attention to this global problem.
As a result of their initiative, the Aral problem has become an
integral part of the state politics of the five newly independent
states.

The scope of the Aral disaster can be illustrated with the
following statistics:

 of the initial surface area of the Aral Sea itself
- 66,458 km2 slightly more than half remained in
the early 1990s;

 of the former volume of water -1,022 km3
- only about one-third remained;

 the salt content of the water increased from 10 ppm
to 31 ppm;

 the temperature change during the summer months has
increased by 2 degrees;

 each hectare of land in the Aral disaster region
has 500-700 kg of salt dust that has fallen on it as a result
of more frequent and severe dust storms on the newly exposed
Aral seabed.

(These data were provided by the Karakalpak Department of
the Uzbekistan Academy of Sciences.)

At present over 90 per cent of Karakalpak women of
child-bearing age suffer from anaemia and/or low blood pressure.
The average infant mortality rate in January and February 1995
was 46 per 1,000 infants under the age of one year. Average life
expectancy has been constantly falling.

The drying out of the Aral Sea has taken place in the course
of only one human generation, i.e. during a 25-year period, and
that cannot but be reflected in both the physical and the
spiritual worlds of its people. The rate of population growth has
stayed the same, but this is the result of the higher than
average birth-rate, and there are ghost "auls," or
villages, deserted by the population. For example, the village of
Ourga had more than 10,000 people living there in 196O, but
within a period of five to six years there was not a single
person left in the village. All of them had been made to move to
the more welcoming (from an environmental standpoint) Kungrad
Region. Only a few people knew about this. Back in 1965, when a
Communist Party Central Committee Decree was issued on land use
and on establishing the USSR Ministry for Water (Minvodhoz), it
was impossible to discuss it. The policies for the development of
new areas and for changing the direction of flow of rivers were
the guiding principle for the state industrial and agricultural
systems in the period of totalitarian rule. And at the time
people believed in a bright future. When that "bright
future" dissolved with the disintegration of the USSR, the
indigenous people of the Aral region seemed to have no hope left
concerning the Sea's preservation or a better future. Some people
had the means to move to prosperous places. Today, the notion of
"environmental refugees" appears in the media. Those
who had nowhere else to go remained in the land of their
ancestors.

Now, however, the people of the Aral region can begin to hope
for rescue, thanks to the increase in activity in international
circles, due in large measure to the United Nations and
especially to the support from international organizations in the
form of humanitarian assistance. We are grateful for their help
and, together with them, we have come to realize that it is not
necessary for us to live the life of a beggar in the world
community. As well as humanitarian help, we need investment in
our local industries. Today, there are only six joint enterprises
in Karakalpakstan, of which only two are in operation, both of
them small scale. We need to develop many more such enterprises.

Our oversights are probably as much to blame for this
situation, the oversights of activists in the cultural sphere
such as writers, journalists, and film-makers. It was perhaps our
attempts to draw attention to the rapidly increasing scale of the
Aral region's ecological catastrophe that frightened the
international community, especially businessmen. This may explain
why bigger enterprises are being established far from the Aral
region.

Yes, we in Central Asia in general, and in the Karakalpak
Republic in particular, have lived at some distance from world
civilization. Yes, we have remained in an environmental disaster
zone with a backward economy. Yes, our comprehension of the world
at large has increased. Yes, we have new state borders following
independence. But, we do live in a common world after all, and
concern about the Aral ecological disaster zone has been
broadening. The appearance of the newly created Aralkum (Aral
desert), together with the ancient great deserts of Central Asia
- Karakum, Kyzylkom, and Ourst Ourt - could have dangerous
regional if not international consequences.

I would like to suggest the following:

1. that all the states of the region set free the region's
two great rivers, the Amudarya and the Syrdarya, and readjust
their agricultural activities in order to save water
resources; it is necessary in planning water consumption to
take into consideration the possible needs of the Aral Sea
and its surrounding areas;

2. the cooperation of regional states' activities in
solving the ecological, economic, and legal problems of the
Aral ecological disaster zone, relying when necessary on the
help of independent experts from the United Nations and other
governmental and non-governmental organizations.

1. the rationalization of water use,
2. the need to improve water quality,
3. the need to protect and re-create valuable landscapes and
ecosystems.

I will show through these examples how wide-ranging data
systems and extensive academic research can play an important
role in solving these problems.

The National Academy of Sciences of Kazakhstan has been
working on the development of a complex programme for the
improvement of the ecological situation in the territory of
Kazakhstan. In this programme, most attention is centred on the
ecological crisis in the Aral and Caspian Sea regions and the
nuclear testing site at Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan, as is
introduced by Tsukatani and Sultangazin (1996). About 20 research
institutions of the Kazakhstan Academy of Sciences have been
involved in the development of this programme. I would like to
concentrate on the most significant aspects of this programme.

The rationalization of water use

The first problem is the rationalization of water use based on
the comprehensive analysis of regional social and ecological
factors. Unfortunately, during the Soviet period, economic
decisions were often made without taking into consideration the
importance of protecting the environment and the social and
economic welfare of the regions involved. For example, a root
cause of the "Aral Sea Problem" was the short-sighted
economic view of those involved in the development and management
of extensive irrigation projects. Driven by the potential for
high profit, the environmental consequences of irrigation
development were often ignored. This situation still exists in
some of the Central Asian republics situated in the upper regions
of the Syrdarya watershed. The task of the scientists is to
reveal the underlying processes of agricultural and economic
development and its impacts and to give qualitative or
quantitative forecasts of the consequences of large projects.

The five countries of Central Asia have adopted a plan to
solve the ecological problems of the Aral Sea and its adjacent
regions. In order to realize this plan it is necessary first of
all to determine the optimal distribution of water resources
among industries. For this task, we will require information on
the economic framework of the republics, the priorities of
various industries, population projections, regional geographical
information systems (GIS), and watershed management data. We will
then be able to use some systems analysis methods to address the
problem of the optimal distribution of water resources. Such an
approach was introduced in the paper by Sultangazin and Tsukatani
(1995), which deals with the distribution of water resources in
the Syrdarya basin.

The information system for environmental control comprises
three levels: first, monitoring and processing; second, modelling
of the environment-economic system; third, environmental control.
The scheme for the optimal control of industries in the Syrdarya
basin takes into consideration the ecological interests of the
Aral Sea. The main constraint is the request for a minimum volume
of inflow to the Aral Sea. Other constraints are imposed by the
level of technology available to the agricultural sector.

The need to improve water quality

The second problem is how to improve water quality by means of
sewage treatment and disposal, and the limitation of waste
discharges and of mineral fertilizer use. The uncontrolled use of
mineral fertilizers and pesticides has a negative impact on the
environment and especially on human health. In the growing
season, pollution of Syrdarya's waters by pesticides reaches 12
MPC (maximum permissible concentration); for nitrates it amounts
to 46 MPC. Mineralization of water in the Syrdarya (previously
fresh) reached 3g/litre, which is 10 times the recommended health
standard.

In view of these conditions, the evaluation and control of
environmental quality and economic activities in this area should
be included in the emergency programmes of the region's policy
makers. It has become important to determine priorities for
regional environmental policies and to reform the structure of
agriculture. Environmental systems are generally considered as
multi-objective systems. Optimal standards for environmental
quality and economic activities include many conflicting goals.
In Sultangazin and Tsukatani (1995) some mathematical models were
constructed for the evaluation and management of regional
environmental systems. Waste disposal planning is defined at two
levels in our models.

The need to protect and re-create landscapes and ecosystems

The degradation of vegetation is occurring over practically
the whole of the Aral Sea basin. This is primarily caused by the
salinization of soils, resulting from irrigation and salt-dust
storms. The number of salt-dust storms has increased with
alarming frequency. At present the area of dried seabed is 36,000
km2 and it is located mostly along the eastern part of
the Sea. Every year about 150,000 metric tons of dust and salt
are lifted into the atmosphere. If we don't stop this process in
future, then the active desertification of adjacent territories
and the merging of the newly created Aral desert (the Aralkum)
with the Karakum and other deserts in the region may lead to the
creation of a new desert of Saharan proportions at the centre of
the Euro-Asian continent, which can have only negative
consequences. Therefore, first of all it is necessary to create
artificial landscape ecosystems in the river deltas and in the
dried-up bottom of the Aral Sea. Some results of scientific
investigations of phytomelioration prepared by the Academy of
Sciences can be used for the creation of artificial ecosystems.

The Kazakh Academy of Sciences has made considerable strides
toward solving the problems of natural resource usage in the
republic. The research and development activities of a number of
institutes during the past 10 years have covered a wide
scientific spectrum of the dynamically changing nature of
Kazakhstan. For example, the Institute of Hydrology and
Hydrophysics is monitoring and investigating the state and
environmental condition of groundwater resources in the territory
of the republic. The Institute of Geography is investigating the
hydro-ecological stability of the Aral and the Caspian Sea basins
and is studying the anthropogenic influences on deserts and other
geosystems. The Institute of Soil Sciences is investigating the
ecological disturbance to soils in southern Kazakhstan (in the
valleys of the Syrdarya, Chu, Ili, Talas, Karatal, etc.) and in
the region of the Aral Sea, and disturbances on the slopes of
Kazakhstan's Tien Shan mountain range. The Institute of Botany is
developing phytomeliorative for the arid areas of the exposed
seabed and is conducting investigations into the productivity of
pastures and into the biology and ecology of plants in the Aral
region. It is also developing maps of plants and of
desertification for the territory of Kazakhstan. The Institute of
Zoology is studying technogenic factors and agricultural activity
that adversely influence the flora and fauna of the republic. At
the Institute of Zoology, the state of ecosystems has been
analysed, based on surveys of the whole of Kazakhstan. This
research has shown that the coastal regions of the Aral and the
Caspian Seas are in fact in a state of total degradation.

In spite of rich data obtained by the various institutes of
the Academy of Sciences, it is still difficult to obtain an
accurate and comprehensive representation of the state of the
national environment and the trends of change. Ground-level
monitoring is carried out in only a limited number of areas and
the extrapolation to other regions is often approximate.
Therefore, the application of remote sensing may be very useful
for future research and monitoring of environmental changes in
Kazakhstan. In applying remote sensing, investigations carried
out through test sites by the institutes will be of great
importance when deciphering aerospace imagery. The system of
environmental monitoring of the territory of Kazakhstan is
projected as a set of instruments oriented to resolving existing
problems. The system will be developed and new problems will be
included in the package. For example, for the atmosphere the
following very important problems can be highlighted:

 dust storms in the Aral Sea region, when millions
of tons of salt are spread over a large area causing
desertification;

 gaseous emissions as a result of accidental breaks
in pipes;

 the state of snow cover and icecaps in the Pamir
Heights and Tien Shan mountains.

 the transfer of water vapour to Central Asia from
other regions.

Concrete tasks for other media will also be developed. Work on
complex analyses, using mathematical models, is under way.
Information obtained at three levels (space - air - ground)
passes through the following stages: data acquisition,
transmission, and reception, primary data processing, archiving,
and the proposal of solutions to applied problems. The project
envisages accomplishing all of the stages. Observations from
space will be provided by satellites. Aerial observations are to
be carried out on flying laboratories in aircraft. Surface-based
observations will be conducted primarily on the testing ground in
the Priaralie (the area immediately adjacent to the Aral Sea) and
in the neighbouring regions of Almaty.

Some recommendations

First, a geographical information system should be created for
the optimal control of the distribution of water resources and of
waste disposal, taking into consideration the social and economic
interests of the republics in the Aral Sea basin. This can be
achieved through the application of the information system
described by Sultangazin and Tsukatani (1995), and by
mathematical models of the environment and economy.

Secondly, in order to undertake research into global
environmental problems of desertification and global warming of
the atmosphere and to evaluate the regional environmental
situation, it would be valuable to establish an International
Centre for Central Asian Ecology in Almaty.

In my discussion, I do not use the term "Central Asian
republics" as it is usually used in the strict geographical
meaning; I include Azerbaijan as a Central Asian republic.

With all its ups and downs, one can divide the interaction
between Iran and Central Asia in the modern era into three
periods.

The first period began in the second half of the nineteenth
century and continued until the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia
and the founding of the Pahlavi dynasty in Iran. In this period,
the Russian state was continuously expanding its influence in
Central Asia, while the inclusion of Iran in the power politics
of European powers, including Russia, sometimes went as far as
the partition of Iran itself.

During this period, one can say that Iran was acting primarily
on a defensive basis, and it did not have many grandiose designs
on Central Asia.

The second period began with the Soviet Union's integration
into its territory of the whole of Central Asia, sealing off its
borders. At that time Iran was entering into a process of
modernization in which the creation of a centralized bureaucracy
and a national identity occurred in parallel with the weakening
of the autonomy of ethnic identities in Iran (i.e. Azeris and
Turkmens). During this period of the Pahlavi dynasty, Iran was
integrated into the world system mainly as part of first British
and then American strategies of containment of the Soviet Union.
This essentially sealed off its borders with the Central Asian
republics of the Soviet Union. With a few nuances, Iranian
attitudes toward the Central Asian republics of the Soviet Union
were the same as Iranian attitudes toward the Soviet Union in
general. The fear of the rapid growth of military capabilities of
the Soviet Union after World War II was another factor that
accounted for the absence of cross-border contacts. In this
second period, Iran did not have its own Central Asian strategy,
although it sometimes had its own Soviet policy. Basically, its
position and its role were determined through its integration
into the Western political and military strategies regarding the
Soviet Union.

The third period started with the foundation of the Islamic
republic in Iran. In a simplified way, one can further divide
relations between Iran and Central Asia since the birth of the
Islamic republic into two periods. The first period was from 1979
to 1988, during which the new republic was confronted with the
task of developing the institutions it dealt with in the
Iran-Iraq war which, one can argue, had contradictory impacts on
the new republic. On the one hand, a long and costly eight-year
war accelerated, according to some points of view, the creation
and consolidation of new institutions for the Islamic republic.
On the other hand, besides its rhetoric, the war had very
pragmatic managerial requirements. Ideologies and beliefs can
influence the way that these managerial and pragmatic tasks are
viewed but cannot replace them. Fighting the war brought to the
attention of the new leaders in a more urgent way the necessity
of taking into consideration the daily tasks of the state while
deepening their awareness of world-scale power relationships as
well as geo-strategic considerations.

Fighting the war under multilateral pressures from Western
powers, and with access to limited resources, taught the leaders
of the Islamic republic to give much more weight to the
importance of South-South trade relations. One could say that
this element was under consideration by some of the Islamic
republic's planners, but the realities of the war and the context
in which it was being carried out gave the new state a more
realistic view of international relations. Besides the acceptance
in principle of the necessity of strengthening South-South
relations, there was a practical need to find whatever would make
for broader interaction. One can say, paradoxically, that the war
with Iraq activated a process of understanding the capacities
that Southern countries can optimize in South-South
relationships. By the end of the Iran-Iraq war, Gorbachev's perestroika
was already in crisis. Very soon thereafter, the
disintegration of the Soviet Union took place. For the first time
in the modern era, an independent Iranian state found itself with
political, economic, and cultural options toward the Central
Asian republics, which had become politically independent
entities both unexpectedly and rapidly.

It is necessary to analyse Iran's misunderstandings and wrong
political choices since 1989 in relation to the Central Asian
republics. What seems to be more important, though, is not only
identifying those wrong political choices, but rather to see the
growing trends coming out of Iran. These growing trends can be
characterized as follows: consciousness by Iranian decision
makers of the complexities of the reality in the Central Asian
republics - their approach has become much more nuanced, and much
more tempered; consciousness that the outcome of political
processes in the Central Asian republics is primarily the result
of the activities of political forces within those countries;
awareness that the Iranian state must interact primarily with its
counterparts, i.e. each state in Central Asia, and that these
interactions can last only if mutual benefits derive from them
(part of which involves Iran playing a stabilizing role);
recognition that the quality of the bilateral relations with each
of the republics will create the foundation of Iran's
interactions with the whole of Central Asia; acknowledgement that
the Iranian presence in Central Asia does not have to be
exclusive - other countries with historical relations and
affinities towards Central Asia can be present along with Iran.
The Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO), which brings
together Turkey and Pakistan with Iran for broader regional
interactions with the Central Asian republics, is the result from
the Iranian perspective of the synthesis of these points.

But Iran, like Turkey, has other frameworks besides the ECO
for interaction with the Central Asian republics. The border
between Iran and Turkmenistan and the border between Iran and
Azerbaijan create the basis for bilateral relations. As important
is the fact that countries bordering the Caspian Sea share a
natural geographical framework for interactions between Iran and
most of the Central Asian republics. Awareness of the massive
presence of Russia in the Caspian Sea region constitutes another
aspect of Iranian strategies. The accumulated effects of these
diversified, but complementary, strategies lead the observer to
notice that the growing trend of Iranian strategies towards
Central Asia lies increasingly in activating South-South
relations among states that face more or less the same kinds of
political, economic, and social challenges.